Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: a man of many symptoms

  • Determination of death

    G. Blake PierpointNorfolk, Virginia, United States The first time I watched someone be declared dead, his heart was still beating. Each contraction drew a steep red wave across the monitor. The ventilator delivered sixteen breaths a minute, raising his chest to the same height each… Read more

  • Goosebumps: When the body remembers

    Fadime PalaScottsdale, Arizona The “goosebumps reflex” is a fascinating living evidence of evolution, a mechanism inherited from millions of years when the ancestors  of humans  were far hairier than today’s  humans. Then, as today, they had at the base of every hair a tiny smooth… Read more

  • Psychosis and Western cultural history

    Colleen DonnellyDenver, Colorado, United States In her dictated autobiography, written in the latter part of the fourteenth century, Margery Kempe offers a first-person description of postpartum psychosis, experienced after the birth of one of her fourteen children. She attributed this period to her struggles with… Read more

  • A bleeding crisis in the air

    George DuneaChicago, Illinois, United States As a former frequent flyer, I recall a crisis at 35,000 feet in which I played a part. I had just settled down to watch for the second time the exploits of a policeman who never failed to solve a… Read more

  • Zenexton: Early modern plague prophylactics

    Christopher DuffinLondon, England Plague was an ever-present threat and source of anxiety during early modern times. Bubonic, pneumonic, and septicemic forms regularly swept through Tudor and Stewart England with little respite between successive epidemics. Blamed variously on divine wrath, astrological events in the heavens, pestilential… Read more

  • The three main rivers of Africa and their main diseases

    It is perhaps worth adding to one’s stock of knowledge that the Nile, at 4,132 miles, is the longest river in the world, followed by the Amazon (3,980 mi), the Yangtze (3,915 mi), and the Mississippi-Missouri (3,902 mi). The Nile is formed by two segments… Read more

  • The donkey in culture, science, and medicine

    The donkey (Equus asinus), though often overshadowed by the horse, has played an essential role in the development of civilizations for roughly six thousand years. Descended from an earlier ancestor, the African wild ass, which likely originated from the Horn of Africa, it has been… Read more

  • Getting drunk without drinking: When the body produces its own alcohol

    Fadime PalaScottsdale, Arizona Imagine getting drunk without drinking a single drop of alcohol. Even for a moment, it sounds strange, doesn’t it? Yet hidden within the fascinating world of medicine is a real condition called auto-brewery syndrome, a disorder that causes the body to produce alcohol… Read more

  • Contrast allergy in question

    David GreenChicago, Illinois, United States An infusion of iodinated contrast medium enhances the images of organs and tissues depicted by radiographic studies, and such infusions are routinely included in most of these examinations. While generally well tolerated, allergic reactions to the infusates do occur and… Read more

  • Ultra-processed foods: Pros and cons

    Ashutosh GuptaChicago, Illinois, United States Processed foods are raw agricultural commodities that have been altered from their original natural state through any of these methods: washing, cutting, heating, cooking, milling, pasteurizing, canning, freezing, dehydrating, or packaging. These foods have added nutrients and ingredients for preservation,… Read more

  • Touch wood

    Loshini RajentharanLiverpool, United Kingdom When I was a house officer in a tertiary hospital in northern Malaysia during my four-month orthopedic rotation, I witnessed something that changed the way I viewed a particular aspect of medicine. Superstitions. I have always loved the color black. Even… Read more

  • The clinician who taught us to see: Remembering Prof. Kolitha Harischandra Sellahewa

    Shane HalpeMoratuwa, Sri Lanka Professor Kolitha Harischandra Sellahewa entered my life in 2015 during my final-year professorial appointment in medicine at the Neville Fernando Teaching Hospital in Sri Lanka. Students spoke of him with a mixture of awe and fear: he was said to be… Read more